Approximately 250 people turned out in Monument Square last night for the statewide Take a Stand day, sponsored by Americans Against Escalation in Iraq, the organization that's been putting the heat on Maine's congressional delegation (and politicians nationwide) all summer. State House speaker Glenn Cummings (D-Portland) spoke at the rally, along with activists and military family members.

A new TV ad, which will run for roughly one week on six channels in Portland and Bangor, calls on Senator Susan Collins to vote to end the war in Iraq -- and lambastes her "continuing support for the war, support for the president and her repeated votes against efforts to bring [the war] to a safe and responsible end." The ad, sponsored by the non-profit Americans United for Change (which also led the charge against Social Security privatization a couple years ago, and which has paid for similar ads targeting other senators in other states), splices together clips of chaos and destruction in Iraq with a shot of Collins and Bush smiling together.

Portland air-guitarist McNallica took fourth place in the US Air Guitar national championship Thursday in New York City, and was the only woman in the five-person final, and the only person to get a perfect 6.0 score (and she got two, both from New Yorker writer and social thinker Malcolm Gladwell!). The Portland Phoenix has exclusive photos and video - technical problems prevented us from posting them yesterday, but check back on Sunday for more, and Monday for even more.

The well-known environmental Web site Grist.org has crowned Maine's College of the Atlantic, located in Bar Harbor, the greenest college or university in the world. COA held the first-known zero-waste graduation in 2005, according to a press release sent out by the school.

Here's the accolade from Grist:

"College of the Atlantic

“Iraq, politically, is a mess,” Tom Allen said at a press conference held this morning to mark his return from a trip to that country, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. “The increase in American forces has led to very little progress on the political front.”

The Democratic representative who’s running against Republican Susan Collins for her seat in the Senate – and highlighting his opposition to the war in Iraq on the campaign trail – returned from his first-ever trip to Iraq on Friday night.

We weren’t able to make it to last night’s City Council meeting, at which a resolution to impeach President Bush and Dark Lord Cheney was discussed. The measure failed, 4-2, with two council members missing and one walking out of the proceedings.

We got a day-after briefing from a couple of councilors today. District 1 councilor Kevin Donoghue, who voted against the resolution because “nobody elected me to speak for them on federal issues,” proposed an amendment that would have allowed Portland’s constituents to speak their own mind – in the form of a referendum – about impeachment.